This week it’s the Texans getting ripped off by the refs

Posted by Michael David Smith on December 2, 2012, 2:16 PM EST

Reuters

Last week, the Texans were given a gift touchdown against the Lions, when the officials wrongly ruled that Justin Forsett had run for an 81-yard score when he had actually gone down after just eight yards. This time, it’s the Texans’ turn to get ripped off by incompetent officials.

In the second quarter in Tennessee, Texans defensive lineman J.J. Watt hit Titans running back Chris Johnson to force a fumble, and Texans defensive lineman Antonio Smith picked up the loose ball and started racing toward the end zone. Although Titans quarterback Jake Locker was chasing after Smith and might have been able to bring him down, it looked like Smith had a good shot at scoring a touchdown.

And then, inexplicably, the officials blew the play dead. For some reason, the officials seemed to think that Smith had been down when he recovered the football, even though he clearly hadn’t been. The Texans were given the ball at the spot where Smith recovered, but if not for the bad call they probably would have had a touchdown.

Texans coach Gary Kubiak was shown on the sideline with his red flag in his hand, suggesting that he briefly considered making the same mistake that Lions coach Jim Schwartz made when he threw his flag on Forsett’s “touchdown.” But Kubiak wisely didn’t throw the flag, which would have resulted in a 15-yard penalty because fumbles are automatically reviewed, just as touchdowns are.

In the end, the bad call wasn’t particularly costly for the Texans, who had a 14-3 lead at the time of the fumble and increased the lead to 21-3 shortly after. So unlike the bad call that helped the Texans last week, this week’s bad call probably won’t have any effect on who wins the game.

21 responses to “This week it’s the Texans getting ripped off by the refs”

No, the Texans didnt march down the field and score. The Texans went 3 and out after the fumble. They scored after Locker was picked off at the 10 on the next series. Screw job. He wasn’t even close to down.

Yes because the Texans deserve this “bad karma” after what happened last week. Really, what were they supposed to do, forfeit in protest to even things out? You make it seem as if they cheated the league in some way.

The Vikings can be added to that list. Jared Allen intercepted Asron Rogers in Packer territory putting the Vikings in scoring position before the half. (Vikings were leading 14-10.). The officals called roughing the passer negating the pick, and Joe Buck and Troy Aikman are both angry about it.

It was a game changing call that cost the Vikings 3-7 points and could very easily decide the game. Buck and Aikman refered to it as horrible.

It’s horrible and inexplicable calls like that (all not reviewable for some reason) which make people think the NFL is rigged.

At least the Texans were allowed to keep the ball. Last week the refs gave the Bengals a mulligan after a third down fumble/incompletion/whatever. The refs aren’t held to account any more than the local weatherman.

nomoreseasontix says:
Dec 2, 2012 2:39 PM
Why are the media not up in arms about the incompetence of the usual officials?
The quality is really not much better than during the lockout.
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The refs messing up now are in a union so that makes them OK to the media. The uproar about the replacement refs was about scabs not safety. The mistakes by the replacement refs were a huge player “safety” issue and damaged the integrity of the game. The mistakes by these referees have been far more impactful and hardly a word is spoken.

The games run much smoother with the real refs (except for the occasional 10 minutes to spot a ball), but the calls they make (and miss) aren’t much better than the replacements. It’s mind boggling that these guys can blow this many calls, every week. Maybe the lack of pre-season practice hurt them as well?

Luckily the Texans haven’t been impacted with a loss by bad ref calls. Green Bay beat us fair and square and New England might do the same next week, but we can live with the really good teams pulling out a win against us. That said, Texans win out and then go 3-0 in the playoffs.

The refs have been pretty bad. The Titans got screwed over against the Colts a few weeks back. Colts fumbled, Titans recovered in position for a game-winning FG. They called the Colts runner down by forward progress before the ball came out, but on replay, the whistle clearly blew after the ball was out. And they didn’t even review it! And I’m sure it was one of those “non-challengable” things.